E- toilets

Students don’t have to hold it and squirm, thanks to e-toilets

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More than 130 electronic toilets set up across schools in Ernakulam district

An ambitious sanitation project for schools,
Suchi@School, initiated by legislator P. Rajeev is nearing completion.
More than 130 electronic toilets have been set up across 35 government
and aided schools in Ernakulam district as part of the project.

Mr. Rajeev told The Hindu
on Sunday that the project’s completion would be announced soon. He
said a total of Rs. 1.50 crore had gone into the sanitation project, of
which Rs. 1.10 crore was from MP’s Local Area Development Fund.

Institutions
like BPCL’s Kochi Refinery too pooled money from their corporate social
responsibility fund. He said efforts were made to tap Total Sanitation
Project, Sarava Siksha Abhiyan, local bodies as well as individual
contributors for money.

Work on e-toilets began a
year ago. He said the cost of the annual maintenance for three years had
been written into the initial cost of setting up the units in various
schools. The service vendor is the State-owned Keltron.

The
local bodies would be able to keep e-toilets running, provided they
contributed Rs. 5,000 a year to enter into an annual maintenance
contract with the service provider from the fourth year, he said.

Mr.
Rajeev said Kerala as a whole and its schools boasted of much higher
levels of toilet availability than the national average. However, the
task remains incomplete as children need to be provided with basic
amenities like potable water and sanitation facilities.

The
National Family Health Survey-3 reported that 91 per cent of the
households in the State had toilet facility. The national average is
just 29 per cent. Kerala is also better when it comes to toilets in
schools. According to the District Information System for Education
2008-09, 83 per cent of the primary and upper primary schools in Kerala
have toilet. The national average is just 67 per cent.

The
percentage of primary and upper primary schools with separate toilet
facilities for girls and boys in Kerala is 78 while it is 54 per cent at
the national level.

The seventh All-India Education
Survey also pointed to the relatively better provision of urinal and
lavatory facilities in the secondary and higher secondary schools in
Kerala when compared to the nation as a whole.

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